Heroin trafficker with ties to Taliban gets life in U.S. prison

June 12, 2012|Reuters

By Lily Kuo

WASHINGTON, June 12 (Reuters) - An Afghan national withlinks to the Taliban was sentenced to life in prison forconspiring to distribute heroin in the United States and use theproceeds to fund the Taliban, U.S. Department of Justiceofficials said on Tuesday.

Haji Bagcho, who authorities called one of the mostnotorious heroin traffickers in the world, was sentenced to lifein prison at the U.S. District Court of the District ofColumbia, after being convicted of conspiracy, distribution ofheroin to the United States and narco-terrorism.

"One of the world's most prolific drug traffickers whohelped fund the Taliban will spend his remaining days behindbars in a U.S. prison," Administrator Michele Leonhart of theDrug Enforcement Administration said in a statement from theJustice Department.

Bagcho's case marks the second time a trial has been heldunder a narco-terrorism statute enacted as a provision of theUSA Patriot Act that went into effect in 2006. The measureapplies to the use of profits from drug sales to fund acts ofterrorism.

Bagcho had been making heroin in secret laboratories alongAfghanistan's border with Pakistan for years, according to thestatement from the Justice Department.

He had used proceeds from sending heroin to more than 20countries to support the former Taliban governor of NangarharProvince and two Taliban commanders responsible for insurgentactivity in eastern Afghanistan, the Justice Department said.

Afghanistan's economy, ruined by decades of war, dependsheavily on the drug trade, which funnels an estimated $100million a year to the Taliban though levies on farmers andtraffickers, according to the United Nations office on Drugs andCrime (UNDOC).

With U.S. and NATO combat forces expected to leaveAfghanistan by the end of 2014, U.N. Secretary-General BanKi-Moon warned at an international conference in February that aglobal effort was needed to combat narcotics production in thecountry.

"We cannot speak of sustainable development when opiumproduction is the only viable economic activity in the country,"Ban told a meeting of the so-called Paris Pact in Vienna on Feb.16.

Bagcho made heroin transactions of more than 123,000kilograms (271,100 pounds) and worth more than $250 million in2006. That accounted for about 20 percent of the total amount ofheroin produced in the world that year, the Justice departmentsaid, citing 2006 statistics from UNDOC.

Bagcho had been the subject of an investigation between theDEA, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, and Afghan law enforcement. Hewas arrested and extradited to the United States fromAfghanistan in May 2009 and convicted of the charges in March bya jury.

Khan Mohammed, a member of an Afghan Taliban cell, from theNangarhar Province, was the first person convicted under thenarco-terrorism statute.

Found guilty for intending to ship heroin to the UnitedStates and use profits from the trade to assist the Taliban in2008, Mohammed also received a life sentence in prison.